Chapter 15
By the time the carriage rattled to a halt in the mews behind Fenwick House, the night had grown thin and brittle. Frost laced the cobbles in pale threads.
Gwen stepped down with care, drawing her cloak close, every nerve still unsteady. Her skin felt too tight for her bones, as if everything that had happened at the lodge had stretched something inside her that could not be neatly coaxed back.
The footman bowed and melted into the shadows. No lamp shone from the rear windows. The household slept.
Gwen slipped through the servants’ entrance, the familiar scent of coal dust and soap meeting her in the narrow passage. Martha had long since gone to bed. The scullery maid, who sometimes snored in the corner, was absent. The house felt like a held breath.
She crept up the servants’ stairs, her hand gliding along the banister to keep herself steady. Each step creaked in protest. She paused once, listening for any sign that Howard was prowling the corridors as he sometimes did when drink would not let him rest.
Silence.
At the top of the stairs, she did not turn toward her room. She went instead to the corridor that housed the family bedchambers, her slippered feet whispering over the runner. Her mother’s door loomed pale in the dimness.
She hesitated, her heart pounding. There was still time to go to bed. There was still time to let the night stand as it was: a tangle of pleasure and hurt and unwelcome clarity about the man at the lodge.
But she had only three weeks. Less now. Every day she waited, Howard’s decision grew teeth.
Gwen lifted her hand and knocked softly.
A moment later, she heard the faint rustle of sheets, a sleepy murmur, then the floorboard groaned as someone rose.
The door opened a careful inch, and Cordelia peered through, her fair hair unpinned, her eyes heavy with sleep and worry—which were often the same thing for her.
“Gwen,” she whispered. “What is it? Is it Howard? Has he—”
“No,” Gwen said quickly. “He sleeps. Or he lies there and fumes. I do not know. May I come in, Mama?”
Cordelia drew the door wider at once. “Of course.”
The room was warm from the banked fire in the grate. A candle burned low on the small bedside table, casting a soft, wavering circle of light. The familiar scent of lavender water clung to the air.
Gwen slipped inside and shut the door behind her, turning the key with a small, decisive click.
Her mother watched the movement, a crease forming between her eyebrows. “Gwen,” she whispered. “What is it? You look pale.”
Gwen gave a small, mirthless smile. “I always look pale. You have told me so since I was ten.”
Cordelia reached for her hand and pulled her closer. “Sit, my darling. Tell me.”
Gwen sat on the edge of the bed. For a moment, the words stuck in her throat. She had rehearsed them in her mind all the way back, along with a dozen variations of her mother’s answers, everything from joyful assent to outraged refusal.
“I have a plan,” she began.
Cordelia’s fingers tightened around her hand. “A plan?”
“For leaving,” Gwen said quietly. “For both of us. For going where he cannot follow without exposing himself as the brute he is.”
“Gwen, do not speak of your stepfather so.”
“He is my mother’s husband, not my father,” Gwen replied, almost gently. “I spoke correctly.”
Cordelia closed her eyes briefly. “Child.”
Gwen drew a breath. “Mama, listen to me. Please. We can go to Cousin Edith in Cheltenham. You remember she wrote last year, inviting us to visit when our lungs needed the country air. She has that dreadful little house with the roses and the yapping dog. She would take us in. She has always adored you.”
“Edith has a kind heart but no money,” Cordelia pointed out. “We would be a burden.”
“I have saved money,” Gwen said quickly. “I have a little put aside. From pin money, from small economies, from the jewels Papa left that Howard does not know I sold. It is not a fortune, but it will carry us there and keep us for a while.”
Cordelia stared at her, astonishment warring with dismay in her eyes. “You sold your father’s things?”
“Not the ones that mattered,” Gwen assured her.
“He would not mind. He always said trinkets were for wearing, not hoarding. We can take the morning coach or hire a private carriage and pay well for discretion. If we leave within the week, we will be gone before Howard has written to St. Agatha’s that we are on our way. ”
Cordelia’s eyes filled with tears. “You have thought of all this?”
“Yes.” Gwen nodded. “For months, in smaller ways. Tonight only gave the plan shape. Mama, we need not stay. We need not spend the rest of our lives walking on the crumbs of his temper, hoping he does not choose to notice.”
Cordelia’s hand trembled in hers. “He has provided for us.”
“He has purchased us,” Gwen corrected. “There is a difference.”
“He has a temper,” Cordelia mumbled. “But so did your father, at times. Marriage is not easy. Vows are not toys to be set down when they are too heavy.”
Gwen’s throat tightened. “Papa never left bruises where no one would see.”
Cordelia flinched again, more visibly. She looked down at her wrists, where the faint shadows had only just faded. “He does not mean to hurt me. He loses himself. Then he repents.”
“He repents only enough to soothe you until the next outburst,” Gwen scoffed. “We both know it.”
Her mother shook her head, as if physically rejecting the words.
“You do not understand, my love. There is a promise between us. A sacrament. I stood before God and said I would remain with him in sickness and in health, for better, for worse. I cannot tear that apart because it has become… difficult.”
“Difficult,” Gwen repeated, almost choking on the gentleness of the word. “Mama, he means to banish me to a convent.”
“I know.”
“I know you know.”
“He believes it is for the best,” Cordelia argued. “That you will be safe there. That the world has not been kind to you, and you will find peace behind those walls. I begged him to reconsider. He would not.”
“Peace,” Gwen muttered bitterly. “In a place I do not choose, among women I do not know, because he has grown tired of my presence at his table.”
“He is frightened,” Cordelia replied softly, taking refuge in the word. “Of scandal. Of what the ton says. Of how it reflects on him. When he is afraid, he becomes controlling. If we love him, we must soothe his fear, not inflame it.”
Gwen stared at her mother, cold sorrow burrowing deep in her chest. “Mama, what of his love for us?”
“He loves us in his own way,” Cordelia whispered.
“In his own way,” Gwen repeated quietly. Suddenly, she felt very old. Far older than her years. “Is it enough for you?”
“Yes,” Cordelia said at once. “I chose him. I chose this life. I will not abandon it because it hurts.”
“And me?” Gwen asked. The question slipped free without permission. “Who chooses me?”
Cordelia’s composure cracked, and her tears spilled over. “Do not make me answer that question.”
“You already have,” Gwen said softly.
Cordelia reached for her, desperate. “You do not understand what it is like to be a wife. To be alone in the world and then find someone who says he will take care of you. It is not so easy to walk away from that, even when…”
“Even when the care becomes a cage,” Gwen finished.
“He can change,” Cordelia insisted. “He is kinder, at times. He laughs. When he is pleased, he is charming. I have seen goodness in him. He is not all darkness, Gwen.”
“I do not ask you to call him a monster,” Gwen said. “I ask you to imagine a life where your worth is not measured by how well you soothe his storms.”
Cordelia’s shoulders shook. “I cannot. I do not know how.”
“Then let me show you,” Gwen pleaded. “We can go to Cousin Edith. We can sew or keep house or even take in lodgers if we must. We can be poor and free instead of comfortable and afraid. Mama, please, come with me.”
Cordelia pressed a hand to her mouth, squeezing her eyes shut as if she could shut out the picture her daughter painted. When she lowered it, the answer was already in her gaze.
“I cannot,” she croaked. “I am his wife. I will remain his wife.”
Gwen’s fingers went numb. “You would stay even if he sent me away? Even if you never see me again?”
Cordelia choked on a sob. “Do not say such things, Gwendoline. We will visit. St. Agatha’s is not at the end of the earth.”
“He will not allow it,” Gwen said. “You know that as well as I do.”
Cordelia’s silence confirmed it.
“He is my husband,” she whispered again, as if the repetition could make the word holy enough to stand against all argument. “I made my choice. I must be faithful to it.”
Gwen pulled her hand back slowly, as if from a flame that had burned deeper than she had expected. “And I,” she replied in a voice she barely recognized as her own, “must be faithful to mine.”
For a moment, they simply looked at one another. Mother and daughter. Two women perched at the edge of the same precipice, one clinging stubbornly to the crumbling ground behind her, the other feeling the rocks give way beneath her feet.
Cordelia reached out again, but Gwen rose before she could touch her.
“You are tired,” Cordelia said, as if this were all that troubled her. “You have had a long day. We will speak again in the morning. Things always look different in the morning.”
“They will look the same,” Gwen muttered. “Only clearer.”
“Do not speak to Howard about this. He would be furious to know that you have been entertaining such wild ideas. Promise me you will not provoke him.”
“I have no intention of telling him anything,” Gwen assured her.
“Good.” Cordelia heaved a sigh of relief. “You will see. Once you are settled in St. Agatha’s, it may not be so terrible as you fear. There is calm in such places. Order. Prayer. Perhaps it will suit you more than you think.”
Gwen stared at her. “You truly believe that?”
“I must,” Cordelia whispered. “Or I will go mad.”
There it was. The line she would not cross. The courage she could not summon.